Jazz Birthdays - August 27

Lester Young ranks together with Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster as one of the three "great tenors" of the the swing era. He was one of the true jazz giants, who came up with a completely different conception in which to play his horn, floating over bar lines with a light tone rather than adopting Coleman Hawkins' then-dominant forceful approach. A non-conformist, Young (nicknamed "Pres" by Billie Holiday) had the ironic experience in the 1950s of hearing many young tenors try to sound exactly like him. “An eccentric, and a loner whose self-destructive tendencies led to his death at age 49, saxophonist Lester Young’s understated playing was marked by its expression of unexaggerated vulnerability. “